Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-19-12

Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-19-12

The Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-5-12

The Bob Muir & The Enemy Below Podcast 3-5-12

The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 31 -Bridemic: Shock and Terror

After today, Turner classic movies goes back to showing things like Zorro’s fighting legion and any one of the 300 Falcon movies done during the 30’s and 40’s. One of the things you learn with TCM is that not everything made in the golden age of Hollywood was golden.

Anyway. Birdemic – Shock and Terror. AHHHHHHH.

Honestly I thought that the golden age of bad movies had passed us by that I would never again see something as god awful and poorly made as Plan Nine from Outer Space, the Creeping Terror or A*P*E.

But I was wrong. From 2010 comes Birdemic Shock and Terror and frankly it’s one of the worst films I have EVER seen. NOTHING WORKS – The acting is awful, the camera work is awful the sound fades out at times and the special effects are laughable – and that’s not even talking about the story.

In this film we follow the life of Rod, played by Alan Bagh. Rod has well not much of a personality. Well none in fact. Nothing against Alan's acting ability but Rod looks to me like someone who is trying to recover from a traumatic brain injury – he walks slowly, he talks in a odd disjointed manner, voice rarely showing emotion and his standard facial expression is "huh?”

Anyway that’s our hero. And we first see him he is driving a blue mustang – slowly. Very very slowly - so slowly that a tow truck towing a car is tailgating him while they are going UPHILL.

We see some more driving. We will see a lot of driving in this film – and a lot of parking – it’s like Manos and Hobgoblins had a baby this movie is with the parking and the driving. We then see Rod Walk. Rod Walks funny. He goes to a yuppie looking café where he sees Nathalie. Nathalie is blonde and cute and the female lead and Rod stalks her. No really he sneaks up behind her and taps her on the shoulder and then instead of rolling around on the ground because he just got a face full of mace, he and Nathalie (who is pretty) engage in PAINFUL getting to know you small talk which goes on far too long – then starts again as Rod realizes he hasn’t stalked her enough – and again instead of Rod getting a face full of mace and a good swift kick to the nads – they exchange business cards. She, by the way, is a model.

We then see Rod watch TV – we learn that global warming has reduced the size of the arctic ice sheet. Mentions of global warming will be a constant in this film. Whereas for example Troll 2 was a rather nasty minded dig at vegetarians the director of this film is sincere about global Warming. Bordering on the psychotic about it, but sincere.

We see Rod go to work. He makes a million dollar sale which sounds good except we hear him offer the guy a 50% discount. And just to note – nobody makes a million dollar software sale over the phone. So while Rod is celebrating we meet his friend who we will call the douche bag because he is a douche bag. There is some talk about how if the company he works for goes public their stock options will make them rich. Rod tries to look excited but misses.

We see Nathalie doing a photo shoot. In a strip mall photographer's studio – she is then told that she has been picked as the cover girl for Victoria’s secret. Again, this is moments after finishing her shoot in a photographers studio in a strip mall. Since this is set in the near future (I’m guessing from the news reports and the gas prices that are shown) it could be that Victoria’s secret has fallen on hard times or the movie is just full of it.

I’d go with the latter.

Rod calls Nathalie and instead of finding out that Nathalie has changed her number ends up getting her to go on a date at ‘That Vietnamese Restaurant”. At least that is what is sounds like. Rod has a bit of trouble with some words which only adds to the impression of someone recovering from a brain injury – perhaps received while bungee jumping.

We see Rod and the Douche bag play basketball in polo shirts – they say the weather is warm for the winter (I’ll get back to that in a moment). Douche bag talks about sex and about being rich and he’s got an annoying gesture for each topic. Later Rod and douche bag find out that the company will be bought for a billion dollars (this film likes round numbers). They are happy, the viewer is beginning to wonder really, just how horrible can death be.

Rod dates Nathalie – apparently there is only one Vietnamese restaurant in the town – who knows – they eat, they talk – Rod says sales suits his personality – viewers by now are wondering if perhaps the video has been mixed up with another film – some small indie film called “Rod Tries to Score” or something like that but no… this is Birdemic.

Nathalie talks to her mother about Rod – N’s mother (I’m going to be typing N from now on it’s easier) is as one would say a person of size as in very large size. She is thrilled that Rod is all these good things N says he is (N talks about aspects of his character that we haven’t seen at all) because if the modeling thing doesn’t work out she says it’s always good to have a man who has a good job forgetting about 40 years of feminism and that someone who gets the cover of the Victoria’s secret catalogue is well the it girl of the modeling world that year and will be off to Milan in about two days.

So Rod and N date again – later they meet Douche bag and Douche bag’s girlfriend who is a friend of N’s for a double date. There is a more talk about global warming.

Rod sells solar panels and we find out there is another phrase other than Vietnamese restaurant that he has trouble saying – Solar panels. To call this boring is an insult to boring. It’s also poorly shot edited and lit. Just plain boring doesn’t cut it.

Rod and N go to the pumpkin festival. Which is clearly noted as happening in October so unless we’ve skipped about 8 months here that whole winter thing back at the pickup basketball game was – well - It was Birdemic weaving it’s magic. They walk on the beach where the wind is blowing so loud that you can’t hear what they are saying. Which is okay. Then there is a TA-DA moment were N sees dead birds. Well she doesn’t seem dead birds she sees CGI dead birds. Really bad CGI. Like CGI I would do with a computer and an idiots guide to CGI book. Then the mother is met – where in real time we hear what boring people sound like when they are gathered in a group “I like to watch TV” is an actual line from the film.

There are then on another date – the waiter giving their beer has a strange diva turn ‘here are your drinks” Also the restaurant is EMPTY which is creepy. Later we see Rod dance – it is not pretty. The song they dance to performed by some guy behind them is endless and bad.

Finally they go off to a hotel and fuck.

Then Rod wakes up and finds out that he’s been asleep the whole time and the whole thing –N, the million dollar sale, the billion dollars, the blue mustang he can’t drive were all a figment of his imagination as he prepares to go to work at a cut rate nursing home – no that doesn’t happen hell that might have been interesting.

Guys this is by now 40 minutes into the picture. Not a single – you know I’m going to curse a bit here – not a single fucking thing that we saw was important like at all there was no god damn point to any of this Rod’s yuppie up and comer who is at least a bit green (his mustang is a hybrid - somewhere Carroll Shelby is weeping uncontrollably at this) and all this stuff about stock options and Victoria’s secret models and endless gibberish spoken by people who sound like they just learned how to speak several days ago is unimportant. NOT a single thing is needed for this film. Character development could have been done in 5 minutes.

Okay . Sorry but the sheer pointlessness of this whole Rod get’s rich and then gets laid plot line galls me.

Finally after we go over some scenes where we see sights we have seen before – expect for some horses – we see the birds attack.

These are really fake looking birds – as in these are animated gif’s done by the director’s cousin in his basement for 50 bucks fake looking.

So finally the sky is full of screeching birds, which is what we paid money for – and they diving on the town and exploding. Ah, wait a minute, birds don’t explode. Well I guess in this film they do. Also they make world war II dive bomber noises just before they hit…and… explode. I think the Foley guy hated the director.

My head was about to explode at about this point in the film.

Rod and N wake up in their hotel room (and why go there both of them have their own places yes?) to find they are surrounded by angry eagles. The barricade the window or part of it then the birds leave. Rod man of action finds his cell phone batter is dead. Actually guys a more plausible scenario would be that since everybody is trying to call the net work is overwhelmed and can’t handle the volume of calls. That’s actually happened –in real life.

Anyway in the movie Rod and N meet up with Ramsey and Becky – we learn they have a van (a van we will be seeing a lot of from now on) and that Rod in the confusion lost his car keys. N you want to take a moment and maybe rethink the whole this is the guy thing? I mean really.

Ramsey takes over – and in one of the films iconic moments they fend off the birds with coat hangers while they make their way to the van. It’s on you tube – words fail in this case. Seriously at this point the movie broke my brain – my notes just became lines and shapes and odd disturbing doodles with only occasional words like “the horror” or “Cthulhu R'lyeh" showing up.

It also turns out Ramsey has an M-16 and a pistol in the van. With unlimited ammunition it seems at least until the end.

They drive – they see some parked cars and rescue two children who’s parents have been killed by birds – as they are doing this, normal traffic can be seen going both ways on the road.

They get some food and then have a picnic near the beach. Which is just what I would do if killer birds could swoop down upon me at any moment; have a picnic outside. The movie's dumber than a huge bag of hammers.

They meet a scientist who warns them about bird flu and global warming and tells them that in caveman days eagles would attack humans. As he’s talking about all the bad things happening due to global warming and the bird attacks we see happy folk in the distance frolicking on the beach and seagulls doing what seagulls do fly about.

Time to trim the cast. Becky is killed by an eagle as she’s about to ‘take a shit’. This has to be a movie first. Not a good first but a first nonetheless. A poignant plea for more public toilets in case of a massive bird attack.

Later Ramsey tries to rescue some folks trapped in a tourist bus – well really as long as the windows are closed the birds couldn’t get to them but Ramsey leads them out side where the birds either spit or piss or do something liquid that causes them to writhe in pain before the birds kill them. Rod and N and the two kids drive off. N by the way never mentions her mother this whole part of the film.

They try to help a man but he just ends up trying to steal their gas – he’s killed by a bird – it takes a while. He's backing away from Rod in plain sight for a long, long time before the bird hits his expression is “okay when the director says fall I’ll fall.” I guess each second of film was so precious that the director (also the producer, and writer and insane person) couldn’t bear to have a single foot removed. Or hell it’s just a bad film.

While getting water in a forest they run into a rather frightening looking fellow in a very fake hippie wig who lectures them about global warming (this is the 3^rd lecture about how bad it is – we get the point) and some sort of beetle that eats the trees which are spreading because the winters aren’t cold enough to kill them or something.

We later catch sight of douche bag and his girl in a car – they are dead – really how hard is it to not open the damn windows? Especially when dealing with bird attacks? Seriously.

After that they run out of gas, they run out of food and they run out of ammo as the birds come to finish them off but before that can happen – other badly done cgi birds – said to be doves on some web sites – well hell who cares. These new birds circle the attacking birds and they all fly off into the sun set – it takes them forever to fly off into the sun set we see the credits roll we see the sequel end by the time these damn credits finish and you have just endured one of the worst films ever made and you’re left with “what’s the point of any of this? What the hell is the ending about? Or any of it? Granted global warming is a bad thing but lord what did that have to do with the birds attacking people? The movie never makes it clear. Not that I care, it’s just another sign of how bad this film is.

It’s awful. You should see it to see how awful it is.

I understand they are making a sequel. When I think about that I feel the will to live slipping away.

Enjoy with takeout barbecued chicken. Revenge!

Well that’s the days of cheese until next year. Hope you enjoyed some of them. I’m off to go read a book.

The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 30 - The Bride of the Monster

Ah Ed Wood. After spending time in the nasty subconscious made film that is Troll 2 it’s almost a pleasure to be here with Ed watching the stock footage and the stolen giant octopus and Tor Johnson bump into things. And of course Bela.

1955’s bride of the monster is commonly held to be Ed Wood’s best film. Now that is not saying that it is a good film, it’s just that compared to say Glen or Glenda or Plan Nine this has a semi coherent plot with a beginning middle and end – of course there are Ed Wood things all over the film – single takes, cheap sets weird off kilter dialogue and this guy with a bird.

After the credits (lots of rain) we see two hunters lost in the swamp – apparently a lot of people have been lost in the swamp here over the past few months, missing without a trace– which of course begs the question why these idiots are here and why didn’t bother to at least listen to the weather report before setting out into a swamp. They run around in the storm – and they are really soaking wet being an Ed Wood Extra was no bed of roses I have to say. They come across the creepy old house in the middle of the swamp and damn if Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson are living there. The sight of Tor drives the hunters into the night. Bela goes inside, makes a motion to Tor and then with a touch of button opens up a secret passage inside the fire place.

As always with these things, several questions come to mind, One – who did the construction work? Are their firms that specialize in this sort of thing – what springs to mind is a dr. evil moment “I’m just asking for a frickin’ secret passage that opens in the fireplace” “well doc the thing is we’d have to cut through some support beams and well is going to be a lot of trouble.” “How much trouble” “About 25K more trouble.”

Also if there is a fire place one assumes it gets cold from time to time so could he use the fire place? I don’t think so.

So Bela emerges into a modern well equipped mad scientist laboratory complete with fake looking octopus behind a glass view screen – it’s part of the lore of this film that the octopus was stolen from a studio but Ed’s crew forgot to steal the motor that ran the arms so it just sits there. I’d have to say I can’t imagine the motor would made it look any more realistic than it does here.

We then go to stock footage of a real octopus then back to our wet extras – one is eaten – we assume – by the octopus, actually he rolls around and has to garb the arms himself to make it move. The other is grabbed by Tor Johnson (in this film he’s called Lobo and we shall call him that from now on.) which is hard to believe even in a storm and watching your friend being killed by a giant octopus the idea that an enormous Swedish man could sneak up on you beggars the imagination.

The captured man wakes up and discovers he is tied to the gurney in Bela’s Modern well equipped Mad Scientists’ lab and Bela explains to him that he is attempting to turn people in to 10 foot tall giants with the strength of twenty men but up until now every attempt has ended up killing the subject. Which it does here.

Again you wonder – when the two hunters showed up at your house wouldn’t have been easier to have had them come inside and then I don’t know drugged them if you needed unwilling subjects for your experiments. The whole thing with the octopus and Lobo seemed rather baroque.

And there is the other factor – what if you succeeded – you’d be dealing with a ten foot tall giant with the strength of twenty men who was probably going to be very very angry at you. I really don’t think Bela had thought all of this out.

So cut to the police station where the police captain – who does some comic relief stuff with a bird that makes you go huh? He talks over the case with Lt\. Dick Craig (played by someone as the legend goes – who’s dad had money to put into the film – Ed did what he had to do to get it done) and the female lead Janet who wears the rather frighten bullet style bras that Madonna would later use to make some sort of point. Janet is a newspaper reporter hot on the trial of the monster that has caused the disappearance of 12 people – you know you’d think at about disappearance number six the police would have assigned more men to the case but there you are.

After a bit of not so funny sparring – Janet takes off – in about the largest car I’ve ever seen – does a little digging and finds out the old house in the middle of swamp has been bought a while ago. This apparently hadn’t occurred to anybody to check on this before now.

Meantime a man claiming to be an expert on monsters shows up at police headquarters. This guy they listen to seriously even though he can’t seem to keep his accent straight. But he is not al he seems.

Janet takes off in her car and then promptly crashes it in the swamp. There she is menaced by stock footage and then by a very fake rubber snake. She is saved by Lobo who for a big guy can really get around – Janet is wearing an argyle wool hat which Tor takes a fancy to.

Next day the monster expert reveals himself to be an agent of the country Bela was born in – he offers to take Bela home and then for a moment there is a real emotion on the set as Bela does the “I have no home” speech – it’s a nice piece and deservedly famous – however right after that Lobo conks the agent on the head and we’re back to the nonsense as the agent is tossed to the octopus.

Janet meantime is a guest/prisoner of Bela. Making it more uncomfortable is that Lobo is quite taken with her. But Bela has plans for her.

Lt. Dick (I can’t help but think that this name is no accident – buy your way into my movie? Well this’ll show you) who is engaged to Janet although well there is nada chemistry between them blunders into the swamp as well. They all end up at the lab. He is shackled to the wall and forced to watch as Bela orders lobo to bring in Janet dressed in a brides outfit – the original title was bride of the Atom so well here she is. Bela wants to try the giant making thing on Janet. Why the brides dress? I don’t have the foggiest idea. I’m sure it was explained in the script somewhere (maybe – this is an Ed Wood film) but due to costs didn’t shoot that scene.

But lobo revolts and frees Janet – who then frees Dick (yes I admit I liked writing that line) who just gets his but stomped by Lobo (in the process getting his shirt ripped in a very very fey looking way) Lobo then puts Bela under the giant making ray and this time it works.

Giant Bela kills Lobo then takes Janet – meantime the police have arrived including the captains’ very put upon desk sergeant who is about as useless as Dick is.

Somehow the house burns down – then Bela drops Janet then everybody shoots Bela – there is a boulder that rolls down a hill and then Giant Bela is killed by the fake octopus in a manner similar to the guy at the start of the film. Man rolling about screaming and pretending the arms are grabbing him. The rest of the Octopus I must say doesn’t look that interested.

Bad movie legend has Bela doing this last bit but he didn’t. it was the stunt guy who played giant Bela.

After that there is stock footage of an atomic explosion which the cast just kind of stare at as they absorb I don’t know how many rems of gamma particles and what not.

The captain says “He tampered in God’s Domain” bringing the last huh of the night. Really is god in the practice of kidnapping folks and trying to turn them into giants? The line doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Well it’s an Ed Wood film. Sense gets clubbed in the head and left in an alley sometime during the first reel.

Enjoy with Calamari.

The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 29 - Troll 2

Ye Gods what an awful film. Mind numbingly bad awful and just well bad to the bloody bone is this picture. It’s one of the rare moments in film where NOTHING is done right.

The story of how this 1990 film got made is almost as weird as the film itself – the director and his wife put together a screen play for an English language film – however neither of them spoke English very well if at all – somehow and I have no idea how they got the money to bring an Italian film crew to Utah to film this- they grabbed some people most of whom had never acted in films before (indeed one of them was a patient at a mental hospital at the time this was a sort of work release deal for him) and started shooting – and the resultant train wreck is the stuff of movie legend. Horrific movie legend but legend none the less.

The – plot – sorry kept trying to think of another word but it doesn’t come to me – concerns the family Waits – Dad, Mom, Holly, and young Joshua go on a vacation where they switch houses with a family who lives in the town of Nilbog (Goblin spelled backwards) which is as one would assume given the name of the town – filled with goblins – in fact the towns folks are Goblins in disguise!

The family is fairly hateful – Mom and Dad are idiots – Dad is an angry idiot – Holly is a sort of mean girl the older sister who is having problems with her boyfriend who is an idiot ( I keep using that word – it fits) who seems to be happier to hang with his buds than be with her. The movie needs cannon fodder, boyfriend and buds supply that.

And then there is Joshua – Joshua is an unpleasant child, he has a very whiney voice, is always sweating and just grates on you – several writers have noted he looks like he’s constipated the whole picture and that fits. He also talks to his dead grandfather – something that causes the family some grief.

We first see the dead grandfather he is scaring the bejesus out of Joshua by telling him a story about goblins who turn people into plants and then eat them (yes this is odd, we’ll get to why in a moment) at first we don’t know he’s dead and we wonder why the hell is he terrifying the child like this – later we find out he’s dead and only Joshua can see him – the afterlife has a lot of rules that we don’t know about I guess – this kind of sucks for Joshua because grandpa keeps putting him in bad situations.

Speaking of which when they arrive in the creepy half abandoned town , followed by boyfriend and buds in a Winnebago looking thing – one of the evil towns folk – Creedence the lady druid serves them all sorts of green food – which per the warning of the dead grandfather to Josh will turn them into plants and food for the goblins. Gramps has stopped time to tell him but He, Josh, has to stop them from eating somehow.

Now no doubt you’ve noticed that for a movie called Troll 2 there have been very few mentions of trolls. That is because there are not trolls As a marketing device the film, original entitled something like Goblins – surprise that is – was named Troll 2 to link it with a marginally successful film Troll by the same company. Hence Troll 2 with no trolls.

So back Josh – who, in one of the films infamous scenes, unable to think of any other way to stop them from chowing down on this awful looking stuff, pees on the food. WE don’t see that – thank god for small mercies - the idea is bad enough.

The family and the boys discover that the only thing to eat in this town is some sort of green milk – which soon turns one of the boys into a plant and as he changes he notices the goblins chowing down and in about the worst bit of acting by a human being about to be eaten by Goblins after being turned into a plant starts saying “oh my god. Oh my god.” In a manner that has to be heard to be believed. The you tube clip of this has had over 4 million hits.

Let’s just take this moment to address the turning into plants thing – part of the underlying lunacy of this film is at the time the director’s wife was writing the screen play several people she knew had become vegetarians and for some reason this irked her no end – she felt they were being smug about it or some such so the goblin where intended to be a satire on vegetarians. No I don’t know how it was supposed to work it just didn’t - but it forms part of the weird undercurrents that float around this film – food seems rather disgusting – except for a bologna sandwich that towards the end of the film which repels goblins like garlic does vampires. It’s a strange and stupid movie.

And the other thing about the script – since it was written by folks who did not speak English the words come out a bit odd – the actors while they were filming tired to say ‘no Americans don’t talk like that’ but the director insisted.

The director by the way is a lunatic – what a surprise that is – apparently at a cast reunion question and answer period he crashed the party and had to be escorted out and continued to yell at them in the hallway. He is convinced he directed a masterpiece. Well he did but not in the way he thought.

Once the masks as it were of the Goblins are removed the film becomes a series of stand offs, captures, escapes and chases where in the end the goblins are defeated – not before one of the other cannon fodder fellows has been seduced by the druid lady using corn on the cob as a sex lure. He is then drowned in popcorn. This movie has issues with food.

And of course the goblin costumes are all stiff masks that look pretty damn fake.

There is a stinger ending that makes no real movie sense but makes sense considering how awful the rest of the film has been.

This is a truly bad film – with this underlying food phobia and nastiness towards vegetarians that just is just bloody weird.

Enjoy with veggies and ranch dip -

The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 28 - The Swarm

As the Oscar build up dissipates – and for the record anyone that was surprised that The Artist won best picture shouldn’t be – Hollywood loves movies about it self – they will keep remaking A Star is Born until the medium dies.

Anyway this film 1978’s The Swarm features an all star cast of someone Hollywood’s most famous and most honored actors, a lavish budget ($21 Million dollars), a story by the author of The Towering Inferno, thousands of bees, and absolutely totally and in all ways sucks.

And to top it off the version I watch was the – you’ll excuse the expression “Director’s Cut” which clocks in at about 2 ½ hours long. – the effect is like watching Manos back to back with Plan Nine from Outer Space after a while you lose the ability to fight about against the aggressive awfulness of the film and end up sitting like a lump on the couch while the movie keeps hitting you with sticks.

It’s earth vs. the Bees and by the end you’re cheering for the Bees.

The film opens with heavily armed army type guys in hazmat looking suits entering what appears to be a missile base - Richard Whitmark (as General Slater is following the action and is flying in on one of the two helicopters this movie shows – I suspect the film bought these helicopters because no matter what the situation we never see more than two helicopters ever. He is concerned that all communication between this base has been cut off.

The team discovers the reason that the base has broken off communication – everybody on the base is dead. Well almost – Michael Caine shows up. You know for most of these actors I’m just embarrassed or shocked that they ended up in such a horrible film. Not Michael Caine. He wasn’t in Hollywood one year to accept his best supporting Oscar for his role in Hannah and her sisters because he was filming Jaws 4 the Revenge. If you pay him, he will act.

Or in this case over act. A lot. I guess he was being paid a lot of money so he figured if he yelled a lot that would seem like he was really acting.

Anyway – it turns out the base was attacked by killer bees – Katharine Ross (nominated for best supporting Actress for The Graduate) shows up and says she and a few survivors hid away while the bees were doing their thing. Michael Caine – who it turns out is a world famous entomologist is given complete change of the efforts to control (read wipe off the face of the earth) the killer bees. And thus begins a series of arguments between Richard Whitmark (who I did feel rather sorry for here) and Michael Cain. Indeed their CONSTANT bickering is a constant in the film.

We cut to a small nearby town – and we are introduced to Olivia De Havilland, Ben Johnson and Fred McMurray. Seems both Fred and Ben have the hots for Olivia who is the head of the town’s school. The first scene shows Fred and Ben bickering about a sign for a flower show – foreshadowing bad things – bees flowers get it?

When I saw this film I was already losing the will to live and I was only about ½ hour in.

I realize that if I try to summarize this film – which has been done by far better writers on bad movies than I am, will only induce the reader that same waiting for oblivion feeling I had while watching it. so I’ll just touch on some highlights or low lights as it where.

One of the earliest victims of the bees outside the missile base are the parents of Young Paul – he is also stung and in one of the silliest aspects of a very silly movie all folks what get stung but survive start to hallucinate huge bees. Michael Caine talks Paul down saying “there is no Bee. Reach out and touch it there is not bee.” I was whishing there was not movie just then.

Later, Paul and two of his friends attempt to destroy the killer bee nest with Molotov cocktails but as we are nowhere near the end the picture – the bees are not destroyed and run or fly amok and attack the little town were Paul lives (along with Olivia and Ben and Fred) and hundreds are killed. Paul confesses to Michael Caine what he did and is patted on the head. Later Paul dies (seems that even if you survive the initial sting there is chance you end up dead – if the screen writer needs it) at this point – Katharine Ross – who’s actual connection to Paul is rather vague melts down demanding to know why god why this child – well for one thing he helped destroy the town and maybe it was better to take him out of the game before he grew up and did more damage?

I especially despise the whole middle aged love triangle between Olivia, Ben and Fred – and here’s why – aside from you having no idea of why this sub plot is here. (there are several sub plots in this film they aren’t interwoven so much as bump into each other like strangers wandering about in a dark room) none. Nada Zippo. Granted real life has all sorts of things going on that have nothing to do with each other but this is a film about killer bees so you kind of expect things to have something to do with that. But no.

Anyway just before the bee attack both Fred and Ben ask Olivia to marry them. she says she will tell them her answer after the school year. Then the bees come and kill half the town and then it is decided to evacuate the town – Ben, Fred and Olivia get on the train with the rest and then the train pulls out and shortly thereafter the train is attacked by killer bees and because the engineer of this train is the stupidest man in the world and left the windows of the engine open – the train crashes and everybody is killed – yep even Ben Fred and Olivia (who has an embarrassing stunt where she – most likely a stunt double – is hurled through the train window as the model train crashes down the mountain side just before Godzilla steps on it. sorry Wrong movie) what on earth was the bloody point of wasting our lives with this silly sub plot if all you’re going to do at the end is have the bees kill them ? really.

But that happens to Richard Chamberlain who has his own subplot where he and Michael Caine don’t get along (surprise I guess Whitmark and Caine yelling at each other was getting tiresome) but he is killed by bees at an atomic power plant that then blows up. Jose Farrar is also blown up in this scene he has really only a walk-on part.

Henry Fonda deserves much derision for his portrayal of an expert on toxins who attempts to discover an antidote to the bee venom. He plays the role in a wheel chair and one classic moment you see him in the wheel chair kick a door open. I suspect even with a 21 million dollar budget they didn’t have a lot of retakes. Later he injects himself with bee venom and tries out his antidote., it doesn’t work. He over acts, sees a huge bee and dies. Hank did you need the money that bad?

In the end the swarm descends upon Houston which the General(who is now in charge – and who didn’t see that coming) and he ends up setting fire to Houston. “will history blame me or the bees?” he asks looking out the window – alas since you were the one who borough the flame throwers to the party – I think the onus in on you. He is later killed by bees.

Another annoying point – everybody killed by the bees dies the same way – in slow motion flailing their arms about as Styrofoam pellets painted to look like bees are shot at them by air hoses. It’s as fake as you can imagine it looks.

Lots of bees were killed for this movie as well – thousands really – they had their stingers removed by workers so they wouldn’t sting the actors or anyone else – of course removing a stinger kills the bee so they must have had to do that a lot. Again I’m not a member of PETA but it just doesn’t sit right with me.

In the end Michael Caine discovers that a sound will attract all the bees – this is a standard trope in these kind of films – for example Beginning of the End the film about giant grasshoppers used the same idea. He sets up loudspeakers out in the gulf of Mexico and pours thousands of gallons of gas on the water – after the bees have been lured in to the middle of all this – the gas is set on fire and the bees are roasted. This seems a bit much coming after Michael Caine had spent the entire film – and I mean the entire film yelling about the environmental impact of pesticides. DDT no – millions of gallons of fuel burning okay?

Well any way the film ends the credits roll and just before the screen goes blank this message comes up

“The African killer bee portrayed in this film bears absolutely no

relationship to the industrious, hard-working, American honey bee to which

we are indebted for pollinating vital crops that feed our nation”

Damn Africans.

Enjoy with tea and honey – it will soothe your throat because you’ll no doubt hurt it yell at this stupid film.